Grant Dawson is Associate Fellow at SAIS Europe
Assistant Professor, University of Nottingham, Ningbo China

Dr Grant Dawson joined the European campus of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies as Associate Fellow in February 2025. He is also an assistant professor at University of Nottingham Ningbo China, teaching on the BA and MA programs. His research interests are Hans J. Morgenthau’s classical realism, emotions in IR, status theory, practice theory, paradiplomacy, and Canada. Dr Dawson is working on a multi-year project, leading to a book of collected journal articles. The project takes up Hans J. Morgenthau’s classical realism, and other more contemporary IR theories, and uses the resulting models to examine cases of Canadian politics and foreign policy. Publications include a book, Here is Hell (2007) on Canada’s decisions to engage in the UN and US peace operations to Somalia in 1992-93, and peer-reviewed original research articles in Global Studies Quarterly, International Politics, International Journal, and Cambridge Review of International Affairs. He also regularly contributes opinion pieces to newspapers in Canada and elsewhere on current international topics, such as the Ukraine War and China.

Dr Dawson joined University of Nottingham Ningbo China in 2014. He served as Acting Head, School of International Studies, during Autumn Semesters 2019 and 2020. He has been visiting scholar at Xiamen University and Fudan University, in China. Prior to 2014, he taught at Aberystwyth University, Wales, and at Carleton University, Canada, where he obtained his PhD.